Combating climate change by helping poorer countries

Nov 12, 2010

The effects of global climate change could be minimised by transferring best available low carbon technologies from the rich to the poor nations, say researchers at the University of Bath.

Professor Geoffrey Hammond and PhD student Gemma Cranston, from the Universitys Department of Mechanical Engineering, estimated the relative contribution of population size and economic growth on global carbon emissions to the year 2100 for the industrialised North and the populus South of the planet.

They found that the main cause for the rise in average global temperatures seen in recent decades is the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels for power and transport.

In 2005, carbon dioxide levels were more than a third higher than they were before the industrial revolution, with the largest rise occurring since 1995.

The research at Bath, published in the International Journal of Global Warming, shows that economic growth in industrialized countries was the most significant driver of carbon emissions during the 20th Century. In contrast, population growth in the so-called emerging economies (such as China and India) is likely to become the dominant driver of climate change in the second half of the present century.

Professor Geoff Hammond, Director of the Universitys Institute for Sustainable Energy & the Environment (I-SEE), explained: We looked at the carbon and environmental footprints of nations around the world to see whether climate change is largely due to economic wealth or population density.

We found that the industrialised North of the globe has so far been mostly responsible for the rise in carbon emissions. Since carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for around 100 years, it is the view of many that it is these nations that should significantly curb their emissions.

Part of this should involve transferring low carbon technologies to less developed nations in the South, and helping these countries to adapt to climate change.

Nations like Brazil, China and India have made it clear that they expect the industrialised countries to take the main responsibility for global warming. They are not prepared to sacrifice the wellbeing of their citizens to mitigate emissions that they regard as being caused by the historic development of the North.

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User comments : 4

There has been only 1/2 degree F of warming, and that took 150 years. Temperatures are now declining. Temperatures rise and fall on a very predictable 60 year cycle, plus other, larger cycles. The warmists are the same ilk which was predicting an ice age back in the 1970's. They are not scientists, they are political power seekers. Free people will be wise to reject their world-government asinine ideas.

"They found that the main cause for the rise in average global temperatures seen in recent decades is the increasing emissions of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels for power and transport"

I'm glad they cleared that up. I was wondering about that. Now we can replace three quarters of the IPCC findings with this article and call it a day.

This doesn't sound like a study. It sounds like a teacher and a student getting drunk over a long weekend and posting something idiotic on facebook, then publishing it in a joke of a journal. Come on, really? "the International Journal of Global Warming"? Yeah, that sounds like a peer reviewed journal, doesn't it?

They still adhere to that old canard? It was found, by observation (the substructure of science), that nearly half of anthropogenic emissions were removed from the atmosphere during a period of 15 years. Even some of their latest literature has that newer number.

So, how is it that these guys are not up on their information and still repeat that falsified number?

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